Promises Broken
by Silver Spider
Summary: "I'm kinda tired of playing 'whose life sucks more'." "Really? I'm pretty sure you'd win." Tony/Carol friendship. Companion story for my fic "Heroes & Demons". Read before chapter 24.


_**Author's Note: **_Here's another side-fic for my long piece "Heros & Demons". This one focuses on how Tony met and got close to Carol Danvers, who has played a big supporting role in the fic above. The story goes hand in hand with chapter 24, though this should be read first. For those of you who read the Ms. Marvel comics and older Avengers issues, you'll notice a lot of familiar things, down to the dialog in a few cases. I heavily referenced Ms. Marvel #31 (Carol's family history), #32 (how Carol and Tony met), and Avengers #200 (widely know as one of the most... misogynistic comic book issues of all time). Anyway, enjoy and please review!

**Promises Broken**

**By: Silver Spider**

Prior to meeting Carol Danvers, Tony Stark didn't think it was possible for him to have a platonic, non-professional relationship with a woman, so it was no surprise that the first time they'd met, he'd hit on her... and had been promptly shot out of the sky.

He was at Karshi-Kanabad Air base in Uzbekistan for the first flight of his new prototype jet , talking to the colonel in charge when the name Danvers painted on the side of the bird caught his attention. Tony promptly demanded to know who wrote on his plane, and the colonel had polity told him that "Cheeseburger" was one of their best pilots.

"'Cheeseburger'?" the billionaire repeated incredulously. "You're letting a man named Cheeseburger fly a multi-billion dollar prototype?"

"No, he's letting me fly it. Carol Danvers, United States Air Force." The response came from a tall, fair featured woman that, in Tony's then-limited opinion, belonged on the cover of Maxim in a bikini rather than in an oh, so bulky flight uniform. Still, he was pleased.

"Tony Stark," he'd said, holding out his hand.

"I know," she'd replied.

"I built this plane," he'd tried again.

"I know."

"There's nothing that I can say that will impress you, is there?"

The woman had simply laughed. Later, while he was watching from the control room, he'd heard her voice over the com-link, asking them to "tell Stark the plane operates better than he does." Tony had laughed, suitably chastised, and was surprised to find that he suddenly felt a great deal of respect for this hot-shot pilot.

The second time he'd seen her was almost a week later.

She was being carried on a stretcher to the base hospital after being airlifted in. Tony hadn't been told much; this was a military matter, and he was a civilian, even if it was his plane that had been lost. At first, all he could see was her face and the ugly, massive bruise across most of her left cheek. The rest of her body was covered in a heavy green blanket, patches of it darker from the blood seeping through. Then a sudden wind had picked up and tossed the thing aside. The soldiers not caring the stretcher scrambled to pick it up and cover her again, but it was too late.

Tony had been told the plane had simply malfunctioned and Danvers had to eject before it crashed. He had believed it for the first 48 hours, but quickly realized there was no way they wouldn't have found her by then unless something more had happened. Looking at her naked, bloody and broken body, he knew he'd been right. Before her fellow soldiers dutifully replaced the blanked, Tony had caught sight of a broken left leg, right arm that looked like a sledge hammer had been taken to it – he'd learned later that was _exactly_ what happened – and countless other cuts, bruises, and other injuries that made him want to turn around and hurl right on the runway.

All Tony could remember thinking then was, _Oh, my God. She's just a baby..._

They hadn't told him much when he demanded to know what had really happened.

"Classified Air Force matter," they'd said. "We just called for your jet. You'll be back in the States tomorrow. Sorry about your plane, Mr. Stark."

He'd wanted to scream that he didn't care about the damn plane but learned early on in the business how to pick his battles with the military. They wouldn't budge on the matter, not when it was about one of their own. Luckily, he was Tony Stark and had his own resources.

By the time his jet landed back on American soil, Tony knew that her full name was Carol Susan Jane Danvers. She was the middle of three children; an older brother, Steven, had been killed in the line of duty when she was a teenager, and a younger brother, Joseph, remained at home. She was from Beverly, Massachusetts, just north of Boston, but hadn't been back home since joining the service right out of high school. The more he read, the more Tony found himself admiring the woman.

Another week passed before he saw her again.

She'd been moved to Ramstein Air Base in Germany for recovery, and after a few brief arguments and promises of discounts on the next batch of prototypes S.I. produced, he'd been led not to the infirmary, to his surprise, but to one of the smaller of the many training rooms. Carol was in a wheelchair lifting a dumbbell with her one good hand. She heard him before she saw him, and the weight went flying towards the door with a shout of frustration.

Tony dodged it... just barely.

"That's quite a pitch, Ms. Danvers." He eyed the dent at the bottom of the wall.

"Mr. Stark?" She blinked, face going from angry to apologetic within split-seconds. "Sorry... I thought..."

"Don't worry about it," Tony waved his hand dismissively. "Women have thrown heavier things at my head before."

He grinned, walked towards her, and offered her the ever-present, never empty glass in his hand. Carol eyed it for a moment, then emptied the contents in two swallows. Tony raised a brow but said nothing as he waited for the content to burn down her throat and patted her on the back as the fit of coughing set in. The airman wiped her mouth with the back of her hand finally regaining her breath.

"That stuff's disgusting," she declared.

"It's one of the most expensive brands of Scotch in the world," Tony informed her. "I had a bottle sent to your commanding officer just so he'd let me come down here."

"Wow." Her laughter was bitter. "Nice to know I'm at least worth the expensive stuff. Thought for sure they'd sell me for less."

_Holy shit..._ he remembered thinking as the words burned into his memory. _What the fuck happened to this girl?_ Unfortunately, he had a very good idea what the answer to that was. Tony almost offered to have another bottle sent to her quarters but thought better of it.

"No offense, Mr. Stark..."

"Tony, please."

"No offense, Tony, but why are you here?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "I wanted to see how you were."

"Do you always take such a personal interest in the lives of soldiers who've tested your toys or just the pretty female ones?" She didn't miss a beat.

"Ah, my reputation obviously precedes me." Tony got the distinct impression of one grenade after another being hurled in his direction.

"It does," she said coolly. "So, one more time, Mr. Stark: why are you here?"

He opened his mouth but nothing came out, and he realized he had no real answer to that. Like most other things, Tony had done this, had learned about her and tracked her down because he was curious. Now that he was was here, he had no idea what he was going to say. Then it came to him.

"I'm want to apologize," he said sincerely. "It was my plane you were flying, so your fate, whatever happened to you, is my responsibility."

She took a breath and looked up at him with eyes the color of ice. "It's not. I was a lousy pilot. I should have been..." she bit back the rest of her statement and recomposed herself. "Even if it was, you don't want that kind of responsibility."

"What I want," he replied, "is for this not to have happened. I built that plane to be invisible to all forms of detection except the naked eye. Now, clearly it didn't work that way, so I didn't do my job. That makes this whole situation my responsibility. Ms. Danvers..."

"Carol."

"Carol," he agreed and knelt on his haunches in front of her chair so they were at eye level. "Despite what people say about me, despite what they think, I stay in this business to build planes and weapons and other things for the protection of soldiers. Soldiers like you. In this case I failed rather epically, and you paid the price. I saw them bring you back to base, Carol. I know the plane didn't crash."

"You know?" She glared daggers at him. "Because my superiors have suspended me from active duty in light of my 'amnesia' about the days I was missing. They want me to talk about it, probably to some shrink who will look at me sympathetically and then recommend I not return to the field in light of some made-up post-traumatic stress."

"I'm sure they..."

"You don't get it!" She slammed her first on the arm of the chair. "You think you know how the military works just because you have a few contacts, but you have no clue. How many of your so-called friends around here are women, Stark?"

"None," Tony admitted.

"Exactly. I know how it is for women in the military. They'll say I won't be able to 'handle the psychological stress'. I know if I open my mouth, I'm looking at an 'honorable discharge', but it'll really be more like a court martial."

Tony was silent for a long time. He had no idea what to say, what to tell her to make any of this better. She was probably right, and some backward medieval part of his brain thought that maybe it was better that way. If his mother had been alive, or if he'd had a sister... Maybe Carol and others _should_ be kept out of harm's way. He pushed the thought away, realizing just how disrespectful it was.

"If you need to see a doctor," he said carefully. "I can arrange for someone. Someone who will keep whatever you say completely confidential. It'll..."

"No." She shook her head vigorously. "No way. What's the point? Everyone has some theory about what happened, and most of them are probably not too far off. It's pretty obvious, right? I mean, even you guessed."

"I have some idea, yeah." Tony watched her reaction. "It's horrible, but..."

"Predictable," Carol finished for him. "That's how everyone's going to see it, and that's how it is when a female soldier ends up in enemy hands. But see, as long as I don't remember anything, they can't claim PTSD or some bullshit like that..."

_And you can pretend it didn't happen..._

"If I do..."

"They'll make you a victim all over again."

He hadn't meant to vocalize the thought ,but realized he had. In an instant, Carol's temper flared. She looked like she wanted to shoot lightning bolts at him.

"I'm not a victim!"

_The hell you're not..._

"Okay." Tony held up his hands. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but I can't do nothing. If you heard all those other things about me, you must've also heard that I'm not a 'do nothing' kind of person."

"I told you I don't need a doctor. They already put me through all the standard tests for infections and... other things." She looked away, humiliated.

"I'm not talking about medical help." The industrialist shook his head. "Though it'll be there the instant you ask for it. I'm talking about getting you back on track after you've healed up. I have a friend here, a captain, and I can ask him to request for you to be transferred into his chain of command. He's a good man, Carol. He won't pull this bullshit or invade your privacy."

She tilted her head to the side. "Captain Rhodes?"

Tony smiled and nodded. "Are we that famous?"

Carol laughed a little, the first warm, genuine laugh he'd heard from her. "Word on the street is you get him into trouble."

"Hey, in my defense, it was Vegas, and he wasn't exactly..." Tony cleared his throat. "And if I finish that sentence, you'll probably know way more than you should about your future commanding officer. If you want me to make the call, that is."

Carol chewed on her lip for a time, and he could tell she was conflicted. Her pride wanted to tell him no, that she would find a way to deal with her current commanders on her own, that she didn't want what she perceived as charity from the rich and powerful Tony Stark. The other part of her, the pilot he'd met two weeks prior, would do anything to be in the air again.

"Okay." She finally nodded, and his reaction was instantaneous. Tony was back on his feet in the blink of an eye, pulling out his cell. His finger was half way to pressing the speed dial to connect to Rhodey, but Carol caught his arm first.

"Don't tell him what happened," she all but pleaded. "I know there are official records, but don't... encourage him to look. I don't want any... special treatment."

"Absolutely not," he promised.

He'd done exactly that. All he'd said to Rhodey was that he needed a favor, and it was done. The then-captain didn't even ask why, simply raised a brow but nodded. It was a good match, from what Tony understood. On more than one occasion, his friend praised the girl's insight and ability to adapt to any aircraft. Nothing he'd said made Tony think that there were issues, but he'd kept in touch with Carol as well, so much so that her number had become third on his speed dial after Obadiah and Rhodey.

One Friday evening almost a year later, he and Rhodey were halfway through a box of pizza, when...

"_Sometimes I have dreams,_

_I picture myself flying_

_Above the clouds_

_High in the sky..._"

Tony practically dove for the phone on the coffee table to turn off the Krystal Harris' "Supergirl" ring tone, but it was too late. Rhodey howled with laughter.

"Who, pray tell, do you have that ring tone for?"

"Ah..." Tony fumbled with the phone. "Carol Danvers."

"As in my squad's Carol Danvers?" His friend gave him a look. "You two still talk?"

But he wasn't listening. Tony finally got the cell to work and stepped aside into the kitchen.

"Hey, Ms. Marvel." He could practically hear her rolling her eyes on the other end.

"Are you ever going to drop that ridiculous nickname?"

"No. It's better than 'Cheeseburger' and not the worst I've come up with. Just ask Platypus."

"I don't even want to know."

"So, what's up?" He pressed the phone between his cheek and shoulder and bent down to retrieve another beer from the fridge.

"Nothing." She seemed to hesitate. There was some kind of noise in the background. Was she at an... airport? "I just flew in from Massachusetts. My folks... persuaded..."

"Bullied," he corrected, popping the top.

"...me into spending my few weeks off with them."

"Poor baby. So lacking any girlfriends you called me. Wanna come over? There's some pizza, beer, and a mindless action movie in it for you. Or," he paused, "maybe I should offer you something stronger after such a traumatic vacation."

She laughed. "Yeah, I was sort of hoping you'd say that. I'm still at LAX. Be there in a bit."

Maybe he should have warned her that her C.O. was also enjoying said pizza and beer in his living room as well, but Tony didn't usually think of pesky little things like what might and might not make other people uncomfortable. When she arrived an hour later, and he led her through the foyer and into the main living room, Carol looked a little startled to see him but a nod and smile from Rhodey put her at more at ease.

"I hate awkward silences." Tony declared. "Everyone knows everyone else, and no one's in uniform. Just think of my house as Vegas, Danvers; whatever happens here, stays here. Make yourself at home. What are you drinking?"

"Umm..." She looked around idly. "Whatever you are, I guess."

"Famous last words," Rhodey snorted. "And I happen to know for a fact you have to be at Edwards in the morning."

Carol blanched, but Tony quickly stepped up to her defense. "My house, my rules, Rhodes. Let the girl have her drink. You can boss her around all you like tomorrow."

She did relax after the second beer, enough to pretend to forget that she was sitting next to her C.O.. There was small-talk with sprinklings of the kind of jokes only military types could come up with, but as Tony observed her, an underlying tension masked by the smiles became apparent. 'Terminator 2' ended half-past midnight, and Rhodey rose from the couch first and stretched.

"I gotta get going," he announced. "With no traffic, I might actually make it there by three."

"Take the jet tomorrow," Tony offered.

"I'm not falling for that again." His friend glared at him. "It's a two hour ride. If I wait for you, I'll be lucky if I get there at one in the afternoon."

"Are you okay to drive?" Carol asked.

"I had a beer a few hours ago," Rhodey told her. "Kind of learned a while ago not to get too carried away here. You, on the other hand…" She giggled. "Yeah, I'm thinking if you're there by tomorrow afternoon, that'll be good. This is a onetime only I've-never-been-at-Tony's-house-so-I-don't-know-any-better pass, soldier."

"Thank you, Sir." She looked only slightly admonished.

Rhodey left, giving Tony a meaningful look as he did so. The billionaire simply waved him off. He watched him pull out of the long driveway, then turned to his one remaining guest with a grin. He got up and disappeared into the kitchen for another moment.

"Now, since the nanny's gone," He returned with two full glasses of red and handed one to her, "we can break out the good stuff. And you can tell me all about your trip and how much better it is to be going back to base than being lectured by your parents."

"Infinitely." She sipped the wine. "It's just… I swear they're the only people left in the world who are capable of making me feel like complete crap. Do they care about the rank or the medals or anything? No. I might as well be fifteen again and breaking my curfew. And I'm sorry for spilling my guts out like this…"

"Show me one person who doesn't have issues with their parents." Tony shrugged. "Hell. I'm still trying to prove something to my dad, and he's been dead for a while. Suma cum lade from M.I.T. wasn't worth the paper it was printed on to him."

"Your parents sent you to college." Carol pointed out. "My dad didn't think his _daughter_ was worth spending that much money on. Then he flipped out when I told him I joined the Air Force. Hasn't forgiven me since."

"Because of your brother?" Tony ventured a guess.

"Steven was… fuckin' perfect." She took another sip of the wine. "Not sure if that happened before or after he got himself killed, but… whatever. Anyway, I'm kinda tired of playing 'whose life sucks more'."

"Really? I'm pretty sure you'd win."

It was meant to be a joke, but the air of superficial conversations from earlier in the evening seemed to have evaporated for good with that. Carol scowled slightly, and Tony all but winced at his stupidity for saying it. They both knew what was on her mind, and she didn't look the least bit happy for it.

"Don't pity me, Stark." Her voice was cold but with a definite tremor to it. "You didn't have to help in the first place."

He wanted to tell her that he didn't, but that wasn't quite right. Maybe pity was the wrong word, but Tony knew his reasons for helping her were rooted in something other than the personal guilt he felt over his debacle with the plane that put her in harm's way in the first place. What happened to her was monstrous. There was no other word for it. The fact that she felt she would have been virtually punished – and probably really would have been – by the very country she served for it made the whole situation all the more disgusting.

"I can't even imagine surviving half the things you went through." It was the only thing he could think to say. "And I know it sounds cliche, but I really wish you'd talk to someone. Maybe not anyone in the military, but..."

"Talk to someone?" Carol glared at him sharply. "Do you think I _want_ to relive that again?"

"You mean you're not reliving it as it is?"

She said nothing, brow creased in a deep frown. He could tell she was somewhere far away, a different time and place, far darker than anything he could even imagine. Carol wrapped her arms around herself and rose to slowly walk to the expansive window overlooking the ocean.

"Marcus," she said finally, so quietly that he barely heard her. "I heard one of them being called Marcus. I remember because I thought it was a strange name for someone from those parts. He... wasn't rough... but I think I'd stopped fighting by then. I stopped fighting."

"If you'd kept fighting," Tony said reasonably, "they would've killed you."

"I could've..."

"You don't have to prove anything, Carol. No one doubts that you're an amazing pilot and soldier, but you're still only human like the rest of us," he reminded her. "Actually, the rest of us probably wouldn't have even survived. It wasn't your fault."

The corner of her mouth turned slightly. "It wasn't your fault, either. Don't even try to deny that you still blame yourself."

"My plane," Tony said flatly.

"My epic piloting skills," Carol countered and blew out a breath. "I guess I can learn a lot from Rhodes. Seriously, I'm usually too full of myself to pay attention, but your friend is damn good. Thanks again for hooking us up."

The innuendo became glaringly obvious to her before she even finishes speaking, and Carol's pale cheeks turned a brilliant shade of crimson. Tony threw back his head and laughed hard.

"Not yet, I haven't!"

And just like that the tension was gone. He watched her carefully, her face momentarily shifting from embarrassment to confusion before relaxing again.

"Better?" he asked. She nodded, still clearly puzzled. "See? Talking helps."

Without bothering to ask for permission, Tony reached into her bag and fished out her cell. "Now," His fingers flew over the small keys faster than she could keep track. "You have my private and work cell programmed into your phone. The numbers are 1 and 2. Call me anytime. If I'm physically capable of picking up, I will."

It only occurred to him years later that he'd lied to her.


End file.
